Driving Question: How can we stop feeding the Energy Vampires and conserve energy? Content & Standards: Math: CCSS.Math.Content.1.MD.C.4 Using graphs students will compare energy use before conservation measures. They will use a timeline to plot their project. Science: GLE 0107.Inq.1,3 Using simple collection sheet students will explain the data and demonstrate understanding by producing scripts to explain why students should conserve energy and how that will look. ELA:CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.2CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.4CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.5CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.6CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.10Graphic Organizer identifies main idea of informational text and kinds of energy & Presentation Rubric for self-assessment (formative assessment) **Social Science:** 1.2.01,4.03 Describe the potential costs and benefits of personal economic choices and demonstrate the responsibility of citizens to conscientiously do what is best for all. Determine who a letter of persuasion should go to and create a persuasive letter about recycling (recycling saves a great deal of energy)
21st Century Skills: Students will collaborate in 5 small groups as they gather information and create their products to communicate on WMES morning news, and with appropriate adults in seeking energy saving solutions . They will use the computer and webpage http://ecologywithlilg.weebly.com/ for research in addition to the class set of Lil’G books. They will create slides as part of their growing Civic Literacy for their presentations using training on PowerPoint at http://activities.macmillanmh.com/reading/treasures/stories/teachcls.html Students will have a voice and choice in how they respond to the information they glean. Major products and activities: Based on books by Helen Hall http://ecologywithlilg.weebly.com/ will be used with each weeks lesson. Energy vocabulary bookmarks Week 1: What is Energy and Why Save it? What would our world be like if we didn’t have energy students experience the answer when the breaker for the classrooms involved so that students experience an hour without energy. Students will learn what energy is and they will learn the difference between renewable and non renewable energy sources. After reading the student books they will come to the library for an Energy Scavenger hunt that will provide opportunities for students to identify both energy consumers and energy creators in the library. The scavenger hunt functions as a formative assessment of their understanding of energy. Students will record their data in graphic organizers. They will compare their answers with the other groups and recieve rewards for their enthusiastic response to the lesson. Week 2: Recycling saves energy. Students will explore the webpage showing results of failing to recycle on the environment and will decide how to approach the problem of making recycling easier and more appealing. They will collect data over the next week about how much plastic and other waste they find in their environment. They will track this daily to see how much trash they detect collectively. Students responded to this activity deciding to write to Mayor Dean and ask that the city provide recycling bins in public locations so that people would be less likely to toss their plastic either into the trash or onto the ground (they had to do some research to find out who mayor dean was!) They wrote persuasive letters which were mailed. These letters demonstrated creativity and an ability to communicate facts that inspire Week 3: Green Building – After reading the third book, students will design a clubhouse which demonstrates an understanding of various kinds of energy and how we use them. They incorporated ways of saving energy into their designs This will function as a summative assessment for their comprehension of the subject. Engneer, Cory Dugan, of TLC – Engineering for Architecture Shared with students about being an architect working with green building design. Students participate by designing their own energy efficient clubhouse, and Cory demonstrated using a CAD program to create a clubhouse from their designs.
Week 4: Assessment & Enduring Understandings: Students will make decisions about how we will proceed and what we can do everyday and how we can change things in our society. The students have made changes in their energy use patterns and in their behavior toward the environment in general. They can express what energy is in broad terms, identify renewable forms of energy and non-renewable forms, and identify ways to conserve energy.
Summative assessment is in two parts. 1) Students will take the online assessment from the webpage 2) Student letters to the mayor will be evaluated by the teacher before they are sent.
Week 5: Celebration -
Students will experiment with the forms of energy at stations and concluding with eating sunshine and making pinwheels and playing the energy games on the website! Instructional Materials and Tools:
Pre-assessment of knowledge and opinions about energy and its conservation.(Librarian)
Vocabulary Book marks – students record words they do not know from reading(Librarian)
Saving Energy with Lil G by Helen Hall (Class set) read together (Teacher)
Graphic organizer to find main idea and the kinds of energy(Librarian) – Scvenger Hunt
Read a-loud fiction: Arthur Turns Green, Wangari's TreesThe Lorax, Children of Earth, Alejandro’s Gift, NON fiction:Clean energy,Saving Energy, Saving Water and Energy, (Teacher)
Samples of coal (which we discuss because of the coal generation and mining nearby), cude oil, Example of Natural gas, solar(cell), Hydropower (water wheel) Pinwheels (wind) explain we cannot have examples of ether biomass or nuclear energy,
Rubric for letters (Teacher)
Summative Assessment of knowledge and opinions about energy and its conservation on the web (Librarian) and the Rubric for letter (Teacher)
Content & Standards:
Math: CCSS.Math.Content.1.MD.C.4 Using graphs students will compare energy use before conservation measures. They will use a timeline to plot their project.
Science: GLE 0107.Inq.1,3 Using simple collection sheet students will explain the data and demonstrate understanding by producing scripts to explain why students should conserve energy and how that will look.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.2CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.4 CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.5 CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.6 CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.10Graphic Organizer identifies main idea of informational text and kinds of energy & Presentation Rubric for self-assessment (formative assessment)
**Social Science:** 1.2.01,4.03 Describe the potential costs and benefits of personal economic choices and demonstrate the responsibility of citizens to conscientiously do what is best for all. Determine who a letter of persuasion should go to and create a persuasive letter about recycling (recycling saves a great deal of energy)
21st Century Skills: Students will collaborate in 5 small groups as they gather information and create their products to communicate on WMES morning news, and with appropriate adults in seeking energy saving solutions . They will use the computer and webpage http://ecologywithlilg.weebly.com/ for research in addition to the class set of Lil’G books. They will create slides as part of their growing Civic Literacy for their presentations using training on PowerPoint at http://activities.macmillanmh.com/reading/treasures/stories/teachcls.html
Students will have a voice and choice in how they respond to the information they glean.
Major products and activities: Based on books by Helen Hall
http://ecologywithlilg.weebly.com/ will be used with each weeks lesson. Energy vocabulary bookmarks
Week 1: What is Energy and Why Save it?
Week 2: Recycling saves energy.
Week 3: Green Building –
To see one design and read about the experience go to my blog
http://dragonlibrary.blogspot.com/2014/04/earthships-clubhouses-and-girl-scout.html
Summative assessment is in two parts. 1) Students will take the online assessment from the webpage 2) Student letters to the mayor will be evaluated by the teacher before they are sent.
Week 5: Celebration -
Students will experiment with the forms of energy at stations and concluding with eating sunshine and making pinwheels and playing the energy games on the website!
Instructional Materials and Tools: